Tribalism is Killing. I think I know why

Getting into power in my country is based not on your ideologies
or a good campaign strategy but rather which tribe you were born
into. A man is most times not judged by his skill set or
character but rather the tribe in which he was born into.
Belonging to a certain tribe killed a lot of people in 2008,
displaced thousands and left a country picking up its pieces
trying to get back on its feet after taking a massive fall.

This is not only limited to my country as it is happening all
over the continent. Politicians have perfected the art of divide
and conquer. Take the South Sudan conflict for example, did you
know that even at the UN refugee camps the two ethnic groups are
being kept on separate sides for security concerns; the Dinka are
on one side and the Nuer on another.

This troubling issue got me thinking. Why are we so prone to
manipulation on such terms? Are we stupid, ignorant or just plain
naïve? Or is tribalism an inherent quality that is hard and
impossible to fight.

Tribalism Vs Ideology

As a scholar I am ideally inclined towards ideology based on my
acquired habit of rationalizing issues. This would therefore mean
that if I take away my scholarly disposition, I will act in
whatever way comes naturally albeit not in all aspects.

The fact that most elections in African nations are most of the
time based purely on tribe rather than issues or ideologies is
most of the time viewed as being naïve. Well, it is to some
extent because it is the cause of bad governance and the
continued turmoil of the continent that we are eventually the
victims of it. But if you critically evaluate the cause of the
situation you realize it is a matter of nature being reinforced
by nurture. Most young Africans who have not had the chance to
leave their villages grow up in a society where all the people
they know belong to their tribe, they get very little interaction
with people from outside this affiliation. When such a person
gets to university, before he can be able to shed off the one
thing he has grown up knowing: very old-age dogs and new tricks!
He most likely gets educated and fails to learn. He then goes
ahead and carries the habits forward.

As human beings we are all naturally subjective when it comes to
family or friends. We act in favor of those we are familiar with
or those we can relate to even if it is remotely. This makes it
easy for someone without any scholarly training to get
manipulated when someone appeals to their emotional conditioning.
This is what politicians and rebel leaders take advantage of:
they manipulate young minds and parade them up for war.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not justifying or defending actions of
those people who are killing and maiming other human beings based
on their tribal affiliation. I am well aware of the effects that
tribalism or ethnicity can have in a society; I have felt the
impacts first hand. What I am putting across is a perspective on
this issue that people mostly ignore. We need to understand our
nature if we are to change it!